Photography apps saw the greatest growth in session activity in China last year, with the games market on the decline, according to figures from Flurry.

For the market as a whole, year-on-year growth from 2014 to 2015 was 23 per cent, with the country representing almost 10 per cent of all sessions the company tracked.

Flurry tracks 425 million devices in China, with its SDK used in 33,000 apps developed by 7,350 companies in the country.

China’s growth was actually behind the global increase of 58 per cent year-on-year, reflecting the country’s relatively mature mobile market. Global increases were driven by Brazil (134 per cent), Indonesia (176 per cent) and India (92 per cent).

In terms of categories, photography, health & fitness, travel and shopping apps saw triple digit growth in sessions.

Photography apps saw the biggest growth year-on-year, with an increase of 267 per cent, followed by health & fitness (128 per cent).

This may be attributed to China’s early adoption of wearable tech, with some reports estimating more than 1 million Apple Watch units were purchased in the country between April 2015 and August 2015.

Lifestyle & shopping growth in China (103 per cent year-on-year) outpaced global growth (81 per cent), showing Chinese consumers “are on the forefront of m-commerce”, the report said.

Although games saw a decline in session activity, it is still the largest driver in sessions overall, accounting for 17 per cent of 2015’s total.

Flurry also said that “Chinese users are on the forefront of key mobile consumer trends and provide developers and advertisers the opportunity to capitalise on the cross section of emerging tech and media.”

The top ‘personas’ that Chinese users fall in are ‘photo and video enthusiasts’, ‘casual and social gamers’, ‘health and fitness enthusiasts’ and ‘cord cutters’.

“Chinese users are following US cord cutting trends.  We’ve found that in addition to indexing high against the cord cutting persona, the media and entertainment category dominates user’s time spent across both iOS and Android devices,” the report said.